Before I get to my question, I just wanted to say that I'm doing some writing for FridayThe13thFilms.com now, and the first comment I got from my first article was someone recognizing me from Blog of Doom, heh. I thought that was pretty cool, so, thanks for the time I had....
Anyways, here's my question[s]...
I know the blog loves to talk Hogan. So it should be fun discussing this one.
I was watching The Match From Hell at SummerSlam '91, and a few things ran through my mind.
They kept calling The Iron Sheik 'Colonel Mustafa', was this an instance where they acted like no one remembers The Sheik? That Colonel Mustafa was just this new guy who hated
America too? Or did Slaughter just pull him up and say "he's no longer the Sheik! He's the Colonel!"?
They made no attempt to identify him as the Iron Sheik on TV. They actually announced the Col. Mustafa character in advance of Sheik appearing, and everyone who I talked wrestling with in high school was like “Ooo, maybe Slaughter’s new partner will be Sid Vicious or someone equally cool and interesting” and then Sheik showed up and it was like “…OK then.” And then yeah, we were expected to just forget he was World champion at one point and was from the country that had been trying to bomb Iraq into the stone age. It was a weird time.
Why the hell was Sid the special ref? Was there ANY reason other than he was a new acquisition they wanted to show off? Also, he HAS to win for stupidest variation of the ref look. Even beating out Vince. That hair, my God...
No reason I can remember. I think the storyline was that Slaughter might cause TROUBLE so they needed a special trouble-shooting referee with a sweet mullet, but there was nothing beyond that.
Now, people always say Hogan shouldn't have been on top in 1991, but when I watch these old shows, people cheer the HELL out of him, and I still see a sea of red & yellow. Is it
just camera tricks, and in actuality he was dying as a draw and Vince just didn't know what to do after the Warrior disaster?
Hogan was still a draw in the sense that he was doing better than Warrior in that position, but the whole company was deep in the crapper from 1990 onwards so it’s hard to make any fair criticisms one way or the other. When he “retired” in 1992, though, it’s not like Vince was crying himself to sleep over it, so he must not have been too worried about it.
What do you believe is the true story of Warrior at SS91? Do you think he felt cheated and wanted more dough, or was he just being the ultimate prick? Honestly, as I typed
the term 'ultimate prick' it wasn't a pun, and then I wanted to change the word 'ultimate', but that's just the best adjective [now see, Nash, THAT's what an adjective is]
I think he wanted to be paid a salary commensurate to the position he held on the #2 show of the year and was well within his rights to try and get it. His methodology was a bit questionable, but there’s no doubt a good chunk of people were buying that show based on him being on top.
Comments
Post a Comment